


Burden

by Euregatto



Series: RVB one-shots [4]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Doyle-centric, Drinking, F/M, Fight or Flight theory, Shakespeare Quotations, Swearing, s13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 22:30:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4763435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Euregatto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the very least, he'll never regret falling in love with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burden

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something to study Doyle and Kimball.

There are two natural responses in human nature: fight and flight. Two sides of the same coin, and a person is either one or the other. Doyle figures that, by this theory, one side must exist in order to define the characteristics of the other, and outcome of the tossup. So by this theory, it should be only natural that he’s drawn so magnetically to someone like Vanessa Kimball. And if by this theory still, without lingering outside the borders of its context, she shouldn’t be angry when in his presence.

And yet she resents him.

Courage is defined by strength and heart and will, by a soul of iron vice, of acceptance and passion and primal instinct. So many intricate and abstract details that it’s amazing anyone could be expected to exist as such a tempest. But that’s Kimball. A storm above oceans with lightning in her veins that can turn leagues of fire to ash with a single thunderous heartbeat. She is _fight_. She is the brawling force of territorial mountain lions, the earthly craters that carve open gorges to drop entire structures into ruin, the consuming drowning _jealous_ rivers that subsume worlds piece by piece. Forcing her way to the frontline, no time for retreat.

She’s overwhelming and complex, never ceases to amaze him in all the years they’ve been enemies (friends at temporary truce rallies, lovers more times than she will care to admit). Unlike her, he is _flight_. And he understands that better than anyone else. He is gentle feathers wreathing around tombstones, the archaic formulas of past and present and future with no variable for the inevitable, the tranquil tide that laps the shores gradually engulfing the coastline, wings that flex in the currents on the brinks of storms. Keeping his distance and observing from afar.

And in a way, he can’t blame her for the bitter pang of disappointment on her tongue when she speaks of their war. Of Locus and Felix and the UNSC and his cowardice.

He acknowledges this. Knows that maybe if he could be as brave as a single fiber in her being, they could lead their armies to victory as a massing unit, a family. He’s got his smarts, is gifted with mathematics and quantum theories and algebraic structures of DNA. But what’s the point of intelligence when she’s already a borderline genius? When she can lead an army with her head and her heart and her entire soul? And it’s because she’s angry, hurt and biting and fighting on wounded legs. Needs support he attempts to offer her no one else inherently can.

He understands that, he thinks, at least to a degree. Takes the brunt of her force, refuses to flee from her. Not from _her_. _Never_ from her. Because it’s her misdirected anger that might just drive her efforts straight into the ground.

And he of all people knows what it’s like to live with regrets.

 

 

 

_“Goddammit Doyle! Don’t you fucking leave me! Please! DOYLE!”_

_“Don’t ever stop fighting, Vanessa.”_

**_“DOYLE!”_ **

The intercom switches off, the guns raise to his head.

 

 

 

(“Killing him wouldn’t make you a monster,” Felix says. “You have the upper hand ‘Nessa. You can leave their army in disarray, take control while their leader bleeds out on every hope they have.”)

Yet nothing ever comes of the treaty talks, offers nothing more than a stalemate each and every time they make the private arrangement. Kimball leaves without saying much either, nothing snarky or inherently frustrated, doesn’t seem all that different really.  Refuses to look at Felix when she returns and doesn’t interact with her soldiers. But Doyle is a little happier, walks with a giddiness to his steps, is thrilled that they’ve gone another day without allowing the situation to slip along its dissension into a massacre.

There’s always something to be said about that. Said about them.

(“I’m surprised she didn’t kill you,” Locus comments off-handedly, almost sounding a little disappointed. Like he knows what’s really going on. And maybe he always has.)

 

 

 

“Any last words?”

Perhaps an inspiring Shakespeare quote, his personal favorite: _it is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves_. Maybe something about never speaking his mind. Another part of him wants to admit, through his intercom, that he’s at peace. Or in a way, words are unnecessary in place of having nothing left to say.

In the end though, he supposes he doesn’t regret as much as he (thinks) says he does, but namely, he doesn’t regret her.

How could anyone regret falling in love with someone as brave and brilliant and terrifying and inspiring and _perfect_ as Vanessa Kimball?

 

 

 

She gets particularly feisty when she finds her way into the bottom of an alcohol bottle, dividing it between her glass and his, some kind of champagne from the ration inventory that wouldn’t serve them any good in battle or in the hands of their soldiers, so she breaks it open in the solitary tranquility of night, when she suspects Doyle might be actively seeking out something to occupy himself with. Instinct or reflex, doesn’t matter which, convinced her to lay out another glass for when the door to her quarters inevitably slid open.

It did, and Doyle had poked his head in expectantly. “Good evening Vanessa!”

That sort of candid greeting would have led to a particularly enthralling night of easing tensions. But now it’s merely silence. She’s seated by the coffee table at the center of the room, swirling the last of her champagne around in her glass absently, still fuming about the events from earlier in the day. That stupid fucking group-therapy session. She’s just about at the end of her rope with how frustrated she is with Doyle, and he knows this, and she knows this, and he knows she knows he knows – fucking _dammit_ , she’d feel guilty if she had been born anyone else.

Because he's more complex than she thought.

He rubs awkwardly at his hands. Without his armor he feels rather exposed, just a slender, cowardly presence with alabaster skin and tarnished blond hair. Like the nerd in a cliché high school clique film. And she’s the dominant force of the movie, with wild curly hair and an adumbral complexion, looks like she could break a man’s neck with little give. But at the same time, her freckles splotch the arch of her nose and renews that generous air that ever captured his curiosity in the first place. There’s something so abstractly powerful about her that he finds her alluringly dangerous.

Or maybe he just really likes freckles.

“I’m scared for them,” she says unsurely, testing the waters.

“Who?”

“Our soldiers. The others. Us.”

He scoots over to her in the collapsible chair and grasps her knee reassuringly. If he hadn’t known her for this long (or come to explore her more intimate areas) she might have broken his arm. He doesn’t register that naturalistic desire to push away and avoid her lashing, anticipates it yet never predicts it. She’s beyond that border, let the past situate itself far behind her in a forgotten, bitter shadow.

“I’m not.”

She quirks an eyebrow at him, thumbs subconsciously at a scar on her chin. “That’s saying a lot, coming from you of all people.”

He chuckles under his breath and shakes his head. “You’re right, but that’s not what I meant. I am a coward, always have been, because I’ve seen the face of war and it’s a terrifying demon. But I do believe in what I’m doing, and I believe in what my men strive to achieve, so at the end of the day, I cannot allow myself to be afraid of all the good we’re doing.”

Realizes, all too late, that the _good they’re doing_ has gotten her men killed. She’s already situated above him with lightning reflexes, one knee dangerously comfortable between his legs to keep her balance, pressing a jagged blade to his throat. The blazing inferno in her eyes is as soothing as the serenity in her posture. And maybe she _should_ kill him. To end this war and take control of his army in the aftermath of the treaty. “ _Good_? Tell me, Doyle, what’s _good_ about _slaughtering_ my _troops_?!”

“Kill me then. I guarantee it’ll change nothing.”

“Water off my back.”

He glimpses her once over with a flicker of his eyes. “But why?”

“Who cares _why_ , Doyle?”

“We are two sides of the same coin. We’re each fighting for the same thing, through different means, from conflicting viewpoints. Killing me doesn’t change what we’ve already accomplished and what we plan to do, it merely hinders the rates of progress and dehumanizes you.” He pushes the blade off his neck but doesn’t make any other motions. She’s watching him. Listening for once. “My men think ill of you, but I know you aren’t evil, Vanessa. While what I do is right to my army, what you do is right to yours. And I want to set aside difference because of the hope our soldiers have to win this war for everything they believe in.”

She blinks, drops the knife wordlessly. Instinctively leans into him. “Too bad you’re shit with speeches, you might just make more allies.”

He’s always been gentle with her. Trails slowly, careful not to lean into her and not to catch. “Words are easy, like the wind”—he slides one hand across the expanse of her thigh, the other cupping the underside of her jaw—“faithful friends are hard to find.”

“If only you could be as good with leading your army as you are the quotes of a guy who’s been irrelevantly dead for centuries.”

“I’d only be half as good as you.” His kiss is gentle too, always so fucking _gentle_. Like his equally curious and pastoral personality. It would annoy her if she didn’t find it so endearing. “And that’s why I’m not scared, Vanessa – because of all the possible leaders in our world, we’ve got you.”

And he doesn’t regret that either.

 

 

 

“I want to quote something by William Shakespeare…”

_I do love nothing in the world so well as you…is that not strange?_

“But to be honest, I don’t think he actually said it.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
